Quote:
Originally Posted by GranteedEV
I think you're drawing causations when there are none or few. Elliott/Johnson, and Smith/Rittich gave us better goaltending than 2016 Hiller or 2014 Berra.
Giordano's offensive output can be more realistically be compared to offense than it can to defense. Maybe there were some risks taken with deep pinches but a lot of the time the goals scored against were due to other reasons - young forwards missing assignments or goaltenders whiffing on easy saves.
On the other hand, once we added Gaudreau, and Giordano/Brodie were still allowed to wheel - we were not a team that struggled to score, outside of a select few games where the Blues would trap us in the neutral zone and Hartley had no answers. That's not to say that the style we played under Hartley was necessarily the "correct" style but there are currently GOOD teams that get a lot more from their defensemen than we have the last two years. The Nashville Predators, the Vegas Golden Knights, and the Tampa Bay Lighting are three teams with highly active defense cores, I bet if you dug into the stats they are getting far more offense from the blue line, and yet despite that that's three of the four teams in the CF. Maybe even Washington's up there too, IDK.
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Hartley 2013-2016:
Shot Attempts for: 23rd
5-5 Goals for: 18th
5-4 Goals For: 15th
5-3 Goals For: 24th
Gulutzan 2016-2018
Shot Attempts For: 10th
5-5 Goals For: 21st
5-4 Goals For: 14th
5-3 Goals For: 7th
Most of that I think is a personnel issue, but it's not like Gulutuzan was handed an offensive juggernaut of a roster. If you don't think a team that wasn't higher than 15th in any offensive category didn't struggle to score, I don't know what to tell you.
Gulutzan's teams were as good offensively and miles better defensively.
The Flames problems in terms of offense come down to the amount of skill in the lineup.